I’ve been holding on to this for a while but I recently was on Lackawanna Ave In Scranton waiting to cross the street, waiting for the light to change when this couple who were waiting with me about the same amount of time just couldn’t bare it anymore and went over to this and started smashing the button as if it was a NES controller. 15 seconds later, the light changed and it was our turn to go and they let out a collective “finally.” The idea that they believe that them hitting the button was the reason that they were able to cross the road is ridiculous. It’s actually a sign of lunacy to believe that these contraptions actually work. They’re a big con and I’m all for that. There purpose is to make people feel like they have a sense of control in this big world. The lights don’t care about me, you or anyone. The lights do what they want when they want and that’s just the world we live in. You have no influence on it.

I think these button crossing devices came out like 20 years ago or maybe I’m dead wrong on that. Either way, I’m positive they’ve never worked. But again, when they got installed people thought “oh look at this, all I have to do is press this button and the world will stop for me. That’s nice, I like that.” Then in like a year when people started noticing that the button didn’t influence the lights they chalked it up to them just being broken. Couldn’t be any more wrong because it’s not that they were broken it’s that they never worked. The Philadelphia Experiment has more validity than the idea of crossing buttons saving the day. The people who made them decided that it be hilarious to install these things just to get a laugh and man have they been laughing for years. I wish I was in on it.

So go ahead and live in your fantasy world where you think you can mold the world with a push of a button. I’ll be on the corner patiently waiting for fate to send me where I need to go while you stand there and contemplate writing a letter to the Scranton Council about how we need to fix the crossing buttons. You do you